I've seen some artists working very hard to avoid saying anything with their works. I might be starting to understand that better. For example, I would like people to learn to see the magic all around us, beyond the impoverished routine meanings of daily life. I can see how it might seem self-defeating to try to tell people specifically what they will see. I face a similar challenge with the writings of Baha'u'llah. For most of my life I've avoided trying to tell people what they mean to me, because I don't want them to be limited by my imperfect or even deformed understanding. If I tell them what I see, they might not look any farther, and simply reproduce my mistakes.
In my experience and observation, trying to avoid saying anything might only result in hiding from ourselves what we are saying to people. Often when I've seen people saying that they don't try to control or change people, it seemed to me that they were fooling themselves, which can have even worse results than consciously seeking to change other people's behavior and ideas. It certainly is harder for me to deal with, when I'm the person whose ideas and behavior someone is trying to change. If the person is doing it frankly, consciously and deliberately, then we can discuss and resolve any problems that might come up. Also, it's very confusing and frustrating for me when someone is trying to change me, and denying it even to herself.
If we try to avoid saying anything in our performances, rather than giving them the freedom we want to give them, to discover their own magic, we might make it even harder for them to escape from the confines of our own thoughts and feelings.
What else can we do? Maybe communicate more, rather than less. Maybe tell people what we see, and invite them to look for something else. Maybe give them examples of how to do that, and invite them to look for better ways. Maybe learn to do it better ourselves. How do we see possibilities in other people's works that they might not see themselves? How can we do it better? It seems to me that if I want to see something in a person's work besides what she sees, it would help me to know what she sees. Otherwise, how would I know if I'm seeing something that she didn't see?
Here's another thought: Even if we aren't fooling ourselves, in spite of our denials, people might be too busy trying to guess what we mean, what we're trying to say, to look beyond it. If we tell them our own thoughts and feelings right from the start, and invite them frankly to look beyond that, we can give them a head start.
I'll be thinking about that.
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Even if we aren't fooling ourselves, in spite of our denials, people might be too busy trying to guess what we mean, what we're trying to say, to look beyond it. If we tell them our own thoughts and feelings right from the start, and invite them frankly to look beyond that, we can give them a head start.
Exactly. But a great deal of the time, I often don't know what I'm saying. Check my blog post, "What does it mean? What does it MEAN?" for my further thoughts.
Yes. I understand that. I thought of that while I was writing, and wondering what to do in that case. I'm still thinking.
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